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September 2007

BREAKING NEWS

What if Your Brand Is NOT Better Than the Rest?

By Jim Holbrook, CEO, EMAK Worldwide

Eat healthier. Sleep sounder. Save the environment. Recycle. Buy local. More than ever, we all want things to be ‘better’ in our world. As marketers, we are charged with inventing the perfect marketing campaigns to show our consumers that our brand is better than the rest when it comes to helping them actualize their ‘better living’ goals. This charge can leave some of us in a bit of a precarious situation: What do we do when we know that our brand is not better than the rest? Read More

Marketers: You Can Help Us Realize Our Healthy Living Goals!

By EMAK Worldwide and BigHeads Network

There is no denying that the brand-consumer relationship has drastically changed. While it used to be that consumers would turn to brands to signify ‘the good life,’ a life comprised of two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot, consumers now are interested in turning to brands to help them activate ‘my good life.’ Read More

TUNE UP Articles from MarketingProfs

The Rules of "Green" Marketing

By Jacquelyn A. Ottman

If you think your customer isn't concerned about environmental issues, or won't pay a premium for products that are more eco-responsible, think again. You may just find an opportunity to enhance your product's performance and strengthen your customer's loyalty—and command a higher price. Like all new products, green products have had their share of whoppers: remember General Motors' EV1 electric car? Hefty's photodegradable trash bags? Earthlight compact fluorescent light bulbs? All these were doomed to the "green graveyard" for refusing to address one of the key rules of green marketing success: balance environmental issues with primary customer needs. Read More

Eight Steps to Creating Brand Evangelists

By Mack Collier

Brand evangelists are special people. They are passionate about your brand, and literally go out of their way to sing its praises to fellow customers. Just as sports teams have fans, brands have evangelists. And just as each fan feels a sense of ownership in the team, a brand evangelist has that same sense of ownership in the brand. That sense of ownership gives brand evangelists a powerful incentive to see the brand succeed. Read More

TUNE IN Cool Websites and Trends

SportsBlogs Nation: Home base for nearly two-dozen baseball blogs.
www.sbnation.com

Anonymous Lawyer: Fictionalized stories from the trenches. www.anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com/

Woot: A site that sells ‘cool stuff cheap.’
www.woot.com

FINE TUNE Cool Marketing Stuff We Have Found from Around the World

A little better gas station:  While this BP gas station in L.A. does pump gas, it also doles out environmental information to its consumers and is built and operated in an environmentally-friendly way. 
A Note from CEO Jim Holbrook: Are you doing it a little better?

The other day, I passed the eco-friendly BP Helios House gas station on the corner of Robertson and Olympic and couldn’t help but think about the station’s tagline, "Doing a little better."  A gas station that says it is doing it a little better… what an interesting marketing concept. 
 
While the station may be better than its competitors because it doles out environmental information to its consumers and is built and operated in an environmentally-friendly way, (check out the innovative green design of the station in the photo below), it still pumps gas that can cause pollution. And, as a result, the station will never be able to get away from the fact that it has a "un-green" component.  Yet, does this fact matter to consumers?  Will consumers look past it and buy into the messaging that a gas company is good because it is "the best" of the bad?  Is doing "a little better" enough?  And, if so, is it a concept that we should apply to our own brands? 

I polled various marketers and asked them this exact question.  The majority of those who answered told me that they felt that doing a little better works because doing a little bit of something was better than doing nothing at all.  Ok, I buy that.  Trying is better than nothing and is the first step towards bigger and better improvements (if it works). 

However, as marketers, I wonder:  Shouldn’t we push ourselves and our brands not to just do better but to do the best we can? There is no denying that we marketers walk a fine line between being charged by our brands to create campaigns claiming our brand is "better than the rest" and creating campaigns that deliver truthful messaging.  And, while this line can sometimes put us into precarious situations, there is never a time to brandwagon.
 
In the end, it seems to me that doing a little better works if we have the right intentions (based on what our consumers are telling us they want and need) and we are trying to solve real problems (vs. doing just enough to avoid trouble.) 

So, I ask you, are you doing your part to "do a little better?"

Jim

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Last Issue's Top Article

Seven Case Histories of Best Practices in Marketing Across the Globe 


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Rachel Saunders
Director of Communications
t. 323 932 4034
Rachel.Saunders@emak.com